Focus on Seniors: Bitter pill is taking health responsibility

There are times when we look at something, and it's more comfortable to turn away. After all, confronting something is difficult. It's often much easier to go with the flow. But the flow brings us downstream. That's where the muck and the silt is. It's the path of least resistance. And it often leads to failure.

So where are we failing? We are failing in health care. I'm not going to play the Obamacare game. That's for someone much more politically astute than I am. But the fact that we are even debating Obamacare as the focus of health care is the problem. We can debate insurance, we can debate Medicare, we can debate how big the safety net should be, we can even debate who should pay for what and whether health care is a right or a privilege.

But we can't debate personal responsibility. We can't debate our own personal responsibility for our health. There's some feeling that we've acquired that we need pills, that we need medications not to survive, but to prevent a problem. We take anti-cholesterol pills, anti-osteoporosis pills, anti-behavior disorder pills, anti-blood pressure pills, anti-diabetes pills. We ask the pills to stop something, but we have no regard for the other things that those pills stop. We say that this is health care. And you know what? It's not.

What it is, is satisfying ourselves that because certain blood tests say we are abnormal, we then take a pill. And then when the tests are normal again, we are healthy. Well, guess what? That's not true. We take the first pill. Then because of a side effect of that pill, we take another, and another, and another. In the meantime, we don't pay enough attention to what we can and should do for our health. Simple things, like eating enough fruits and vegetables and avoiding processed foods. We lose the importance of that. We lose the importance of the nutrition that will make us far healthier than a prevention pill will ever make us. We think that because our overworked doctors recommend the pill, that's the only way. But here's the rub. The healthiest doctors don't take all those pills. They're at the gym. They're eating good foods. They're reading to find out what they can do better to maintain their health. And unless it's a life-threatening condition, they are trying everything to prevent themselves from having to take pills.

Somehow, we've gotten the idea that we can't know enough to make health care decisions. It's funny. When you're in the dental office and have to make a decision, you ask the benefits, the risks and how much it will cost. You ask about alternatives. When your doctor makes a recommendation, how often do you ask him or her the same things? Often, when it's paid for by someone else, we somehow take less interest in the subject.

I will tell you a fact. You can make your own health care decisions. You can read. You can educate yourself. You can reverse the course of nearly every disease. And certainly you can prevent most diseases without pills. I've seen it in my own patients. When I look at them, I'm not just looking at their teeth, their gums, their bone, their facial muscles, their headaches or their sleep apnea. I'm looking at them, period. I'm not alone.

We in the health professions are looking at you from our own particular viewpoints. We look not only at disease. We look at what you can do better. Some of you have made miraculous changes in your health by taking more responsibility for what goes into your bodies and what doesn't, what you choose to do and what you don't. And when you take that level of responsibility, not only will your oral health be better, so will your general health.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Focus on Seniors: Bitter pill is taking health responsibility

Some of you have made miraculous changes in your health by taking more responsibility for what goes into your bodies and what doesn't, what you choose to do and what you don't.